Unseen Things
by Arkylie Killingstad
Summary: The Foundation tries to save the world… by any means necessary. Team Machine has spent the last few years keeping innocent people out of their grasp, while evading that same grasp themselves. But suddenly they've got a bigger problem on their hands….
1. Unexpected Lull

_This is_ _ **a Person of Interest tale**_ _set in_ _ **an SCP-Fusion universe**_ _. Rather than a traditional crossover, which would borrow from both universes, this is reinventing POI in a world that heavily borrows from the SCP aesthetic. I kept the name "the Foundation" because I couldn't think of a substitute in time; I did create my own analogs for the POI "groups of interest" (e.g. Decima = The Order), and tried to use my own terminology (e.g. "anomalous object"). I know only a small fraction of the SCP mythos, so I hope I haven't pick up unexpected nuances or stepped on any toes._

 _Assuming that I can stay on track with this project, there should be five updates total, spread out across the month from now through to the 31st. I'll be reinforcing the overall feel with some meta elements; expect this tale to be creepy and unsettling, especially as the month goes on. The ending should be a bittersweet tearjerker, and I offer no guarantees that any specific character will emerge safe, sane, or even alive._

* * *

The headache was, thankfully, subsiding; Harold paused in his typing and rubbed at his temples. A moment ago, he'd felt so _rushed_ , almost panicked, but… honestly, there wasn't much left to do today; he'd just let himself get overwhelmed. One more side effect of having to survive in a city so thoroughly under the thumb of the Foundation.

Around him, the subway station was dark and calm, a place of refuge despite its proximity to a Foundation hot-spot. Even the soft clatter of Nathan climbing the shelves and knocking over books was more of a comfort than a disturbance; the man was always researching _something_ these days.

But, really, what else was he going to do with his time? As a human, Nathan had enjoyed two vices—alcohol and women—but now, he didn't have the equipment for either. He couldn't get high (he'd tried), and couldn't even leave their hideout except in Harold's laptop bag. If he'd still had muscles, Harold would've set him up a little gym or something, but exercise wouldn't even give him a dopamine rush, and it wasn't going to do anything useful to cotton stuffing.

Operating a laptop was slow enough that Nathan had given up on trying to code; he could barely use a mouse, and being reduced to hunt-and-peck (while trying not to step on the spacebar) was almost insulting. Harold had picked him up a Kindle, too, but Nathan found the stylus awkward and frustrating—and his felted mitten-hands were useless with any kind of touchscreen.

(Come to think of it… Harold set up a quick reminder to buy Nathan a compact USB keyboard. Maybe a split keyboard. Something small enough to balance on his lap.)

One afternoon, Shaw had done her best to find some sort of game that he could play, but the active ones were out of reach: He could no more operate a controller than use mouse and keyboard at the same time, and the Kinect refused to recognize him. He didn't care for the more cerebral fare. In the end, he'd accepted passive entertainment: Netflix, YouTube, and his newest obsession, an imageboard scraper called _nikbot_ (which Harold considered an utter waste of valuable time).

The rest of the time, he got to know Harold's reference collection—or as much of it as was left after they'd had to flee the Library. The majority of their resources were digital, of course, but, when it came to anomalous phenomena, it was hardly surprising that the useful texts weren't published through traditional channels.

As Harold got back to work, he wondered what Nathan was looking into tonight. Aside from the ever-present need to stay a step ahead of the Foundation, there weren't any long-term research projects on their plate right now… not any that he could think of. Of course, he was pretty tired; Nathan might be immune to sleep deprivation, but Harold wasn't so lucky, and trying to balance the cases with his current alias was leaving him a little short on resources. Already he was looking forward to heading home, back to Professor Whistler's apartment, to clear his head with a good night's rest.

Of course, that was after he'd closed down his workstation for the night. With a sigh, he started to sort through his open tabs, carefully bookmarking the useful ones for later. Most of the tabs weren't relevant anymore, now that the day's investigations had come to a close. In fact… huh. A lot of the sites didn't even seem relevant for the case in the first place. Some construction company… a worksite in Queens… the Metropolitan Hospital? None of this seemed related to the wedding they'd just gotten back from, and he couldn't recall any reason to be looking up a hospital, not at this time of night.

Maybe he'd been looking up something else and been interrupted by the case? Hmm.

Shaking his head, he went through the tabs a little faster, barely paying attention to the contents as one tab after another went down. _click. click. click._ If any of them turned out to be important, they'd still be in his history until he cleared his cache in a day or so.

 _tick  
tick  
tickticktick_

The alert startled him; he glanced at his phone, knowing full well that it read 36/41.

So much for going home early. Harold paused to stretch, and then settled back into the chair, closing down more pointless tabs. Honestly, he should have thought… but then, they'd all had a lot to think about, what with the Foundation's grip on the city drawing ever tighter. It wasn't surprising that it had slipped his mind. Too bad John had gone home for the night.

Half the tabs were down when sudden footsteps on the stairs startled him from his reverie.

"Hey, Fin— _oof_ " John said as he went sprawling at the foot of the stairs. Huh. Usually he was more graceful than that.

"Mr. Reese," Harold said disapprovingly, turning back to his monitors, "the safety and security of this location depends primarily on the Foundation not realizing that there's an anomalous location directly beneath one that they've already deemed a contained non-threat. The more frequently we make use of the entrance, the more likely we are to call attention to our presence."

John strolled toward the subway car, rubbing a hand over his face. "Funny, Harold, given that _you're_ here at midnight. Find a replacement for your cufflinks?"

Harold's gaze fell to his cuffs; he missed those cufflinks. It was nice to have people ignore you, to watch their eyes slide off like they didn't even realize you were there. They'd let him move about in plain sight without any fear of being noticed or remembered. But two years ago, before turning himself over in exchange for Grace, he'd left them at the Library, in the hopes that John could continue using them to work the missions—a very sensible plan that had backfired when The Order had stormed the place, just hours after Harold had been forced to reveal its existence.

Since losing them, he'd felt much more exposed; he had to rely on a variety of other anomalous objects, none with quite the same benefit. Tonight, a scarf that offered a small variety of visual disguises. The effect worked on the mind; it couldn't spoof camera footage any more than it could fool the sense of touch. Still, it had managed to let him mimic the missing uncle, who was close enough in height and build and wardrobe that no one had seemed to notice the disparity, even when he'd had to endure a few hugs.

The more troubling detail, though, was that if the cultists had laid hands on the cufflinks, if they even realized what they were, what they _did_ … then some agent of The Order was likely using them. Not Greer, he didn't think, but still… someone who went completely unnoticed, except to those who were taking at least mid-level mnestics, the kind that Harold had been getting through Elias. With Elias holed up in his best safe house, they no longer had a trustworthy supplier… which meant no protection against the cufflinks' effect.

Still, he wasn't _entirely_ helpless. "The replacement, Mr. Reese, is caution and prudence. And knowing how to avoid Foundation cameras. Plus," he admitted, getting back to his task, "the glasses I was wearing make me aware when anyone is looking in my direction or paying any attention to me. Quite handy."

John snorted. "Get _me_ a pair."

"I believe they're one of a kind. Though, of course, if I ever happen across a similar item… I should also point out that they may or may not pick up on people who are using anomalous effects to hide in plain sight." Not something he could easily test.

"No worse than usual, in that case."

"I suppose not." He yawned, and rubbed at his face. "Anyway, I have to clean up the rest of the case… get things ready for tomorrow. I thought you had gone home for the night."

"I did," John protested. "But then I… uh…" He chuckled, tossing a tennis ball to ricochet off the far side of the subway car and out the door. The throw knocked down Harold's neon purple disguise scarf; John went to retrieve it.

"…Yes?" Harold queried.

John picked up the scarf. "What?"

Harold swiveled to look at John. "Did you come down here for a reason?"

Halfway to hanging the scarf up, John paused. "I dunno, guess I forgot something?" he offered with a half-shrug. As he hung up the scarf, he noticed Nathan struggling to move some books; he carefully reached in and pulled them out for him, laying them on the wide shelf. Nathan looked up at him and tapped a hand to his mouth: _thanks_.

John glanced over the upright books, always an interesting assortment: _Can Humanity Survive?, You Can't See Them But They're There, Find the Quiet Creatures, Them: The Nameless Ones, All the Lore on Extradimensional Spaces._

Besides the books—what was left of Harold's reference collection—the shelves held a variety of anomalous items. When the Library had been compromised, Harold had lost the majority of his collection, but he'd never been foolish enough to keep everything at one location. Among the remnants were a few forms of protection, along with different ways to spy or to get into places he didn't belong. One piece worked like a supernatural energy drink, pushing back exhaustion, clearing your head and sharpening your memory as though you'd had a good night's sleep—although once the kick wore off, it left you with about ten hours of nearly crippling déjà vu.

Most, though, were ways to hide: various disguises, glamors and other illusions, even some temporary transformations (the permanent ones were generally too dangerous to use on a person—not that that stopped the Foundation from testing them out on Theta-class prisoners—and they hadn't yet found anything that would let Nathan regain his human form).

"What was it that you forgot?"

Startled, John glanced over at Harold. "Huh. You know, it's totally slipped my mind. Guess it can't have been that important." He sauntered over, surveying the all-but-incomprehensible code scrolling by in one window, and the various surveillance footage playing in several others. "Don't tell me the Book has a new case for us already."

Shaking his head, Harold turned back to the workstation. "I would have called you."

"This late?"

"I don't usually check the Book at night, Mr. Reese." He glanced at his phone, noted the time. "But yes, if a case had come up, I would have called you this late, unless the anomaly seemed trivial to deal with."

"Harold…"

"You're running yourself ragged, John. I'm not going to call you in over trivialities. Going without sleep is going to get you _shot_. More than usual," he quickly amended.

"Been doing all right _so_ far," John protested, mildly.

"Yes, well, I'll feel much happier when the precinct finally sets you up with a partner. I'm surprised that the captain has let you go it alone so long."

John huffed. "Didn't realize you were so concerned about me, Finch," he said, and tossed the ball out through the other door.

"I'm concerned about _all_ of us. Equally. The Book's predictions may keep us from stumbling headlong into anomalous phenomena, but I still haven't found a way, anomalous _or_ technological, to keep us fully aware of the Foundation's movements. And, unlike me, Mr. Reese, you're frequently going up against armed criminals without any backup. Of course your safety concerns me. Deeply."

John leaned on the back of Harold's chair, careful not to put too much weight on it. "That why you're watching the precinct when I'm not even there?"

Harold blinked at the screen: several views of the precinct, inside and out. "I was just keeping an eye on…" He stopped short. "I guess I forgot to close down the feeds; I've been rather busy." He closed them now; the only views remaining were some streets in Queens, a random construction site, the hospital, and the cameras around the entrance to their subway hideout.

"You know, Finch," John said slowly, thoughtful, "we got into this knowing that we wouldn't have a lot of support from local law enforcement. It was surprising enough to get Carter on our side."

The bittersweet memory of their friend brought a smile to Harold's face. _It's not the same without her_ , he didn't say, because that truth wasn't restricted to Carter; they each had loved ones they'd left behind, and it did little good to dwell on the loss, except as motivation to keep moving, to keep helping others. "She was a valuable ally, and a dear friend."

"With all the corruption that spread through the department, she somehow managed to stay pure. True to her values despite all the pressure to give in. Willing to stand up to even the Foundation, when it overstepped its bounds."

"And clever enough to set the Foundation and The Order against each other—clever enough to manage it without getting caught. She truly was a marvel. Who else could have pieced together the source of our information the way she did?"

"That's another thing," John said. "We could _trust_ Carter. Let her in on a few of our secrets. She had integrity, but she could also think outside the box, see that our mission was doing good and mostly leave it alone. Sometimes even help us break the law. That's the only reason we were able to bring her into the Library after that—"

"Yes, the case with those Theta-class fugitives."

"So do you really think we'd luck out and find a second cop we could trust with our secrets?"

Harold sighed. "Mr. Reese… we don't need to share our deepest secrets with someone just to get you a partner on the force."

"With all the crazy stuff I get up to? The way I need to rush off at a moment's notice to save a life without being able to explain how I knew they were going to be in danger? Anyone smart enough to help us would figure out that _something_ 's up. No, it's better that I stick it out alone, like always. Besides, Finch, I've got you to watch my back."

Frowning, Harold turned to look at John. "Not as thoroughly as I used to," he countered, as if it were some personal failing. "I've got my own balancing act to manage."

John rooted through one of the drawer for a moment before putting the ball away. "Yeah, aren't you a little late to get to bed yourself, Professor? Nine AM classes."

"Oh, I'm just… finishing up for the night. Not much left to do, really. I suppose it's good that you're here, actually; she'll be here in a few minutes."

John grinned.

Harold rubbed his forehead. "In the meantime," he said, getting back to his work, "maybe you could figure out if Nathan needs any help over there."

The sound of rummaging had stopped; John headed over to the far side of the car. Nathan was standing on the second shelf down, holding up a book that was actually taller than his soft muslin body—even counting the unruly tuft of bright yellow yarn up top.

Picking up the book, John looked it over. "What's this?" he asked, pointlessly, since he wasn't going to get more info from Nathan's rudimentary sign language than he could from reading the title. " _Anomalous Entities in Urban Areas (Non-Mammalian)_. Been looking up urban monsters tonight?"

"Anomalous entities aren't merely—" Harold cut himself off; they'd had this discussion before, and that was John yanking his chain again. "Ah, no. I don't recall anything related to urban creatures, anomalous or otherwise. Maybe he's researching something more long-term?"

Shaking his head, Nathan tapped his wrist— _time_ —and then extended both hands, palm up, folded the mitten part over, and dropped them a couple times. _Now_.

"Researching something for right now? I thought the Book didn't have another case for us just yet."

"It doesn't," Harold confirmed. "At least, last I checked."

Setting the book down, Nathan tapped on John's arm, then motioned for a lift. John set him on his shoulder and, at his direction, brought him over to Harold's desk, where the Book lay. Nathan slid down his arm, quickly hobbled over to the Book, and, with some difficulty, pulled open the heavy cover. He flipped through a few pages and gestured at the image.

John glanced at it, but it didn't seem like anything useful. Weird monsters, nothing new… nothing he cared to look at for very long. He started idly flipping through the pages, pulling up an assortment of memories as the images shifted, displaying various cases.

Leon Tao, in one of the many, _many_ times he'd crossed their path. They hadn't seen him in months; John could only hope that the flighty changeling was keeping himself off the Foundation's radar.

Zoe Morgan, looking quite vulnerable before they'd found out her true nature. The fact that they'd tried to help her that day had endeared them to her, giving them a powerful ally as their cases got harder to pull off with a two-man team.

Charlie Burton, bleeding from the shoulder as John tried to patch him up. Of course, the fact that he'd fallen victim to his own black-market items was a tidbit they didn't learn until it was almost too late. Still, although they'd started off on opposite corners, it hadn't taken them long to find some common goals, such as fighting the Foundation's control over every possible anomalous phenomenon. Until recently, they'd relied on Elias to direct certain objects their way, reciprocating by letting him know when the operatives started nosing too close to his operation.

Of course, since they'd rescued him from The Order's clutches just a couple of months ago, he was currently camped out in Harold's best safe house, doing some research of his own while keeping out of the public eye. John had no doubt that he'd soon find some way to get an advantage out of the situation, if he hadn't already; Elias could bide his time for years if he felt it was necessary, but he wasn't the type to simply surrender.

The next page showed Jiao Lin, pulling a glowing substance out of a man in a hospital bed. That had turned out to be what some called 'souls'—the jury was still out on how much it overlapped with the common understanding of the term—and Lin had been borrowing, rather than stealing. Not that it was entirely harmless, but she hadn't turned out to be a killer. With the help of the detective who'd been chasing her, they'd managed to track down the black-market group that was threatening her daughter, and then whisk mother and daughter both away before the Foundation could get their hands on a person with a gift that powerful.

Genrika was on the next page, partially obscured by a man affixing something to the back of her neck. As they'd found out later, the men who'd been after her had access to anomalous objects, including interrogation devices meant to cause pain when you lied—thankfully, they'd gotten to her before that scene ever played out.

Then there was Control, along with four others, held paralyzed before a winged statue of Ma'at; the Book hadn't shown it, but Harold had gotten dragged along with the rest of them. Whatever he'd been expecting at the time, he'd thought that he could handle it, could resist—for a while—whatever sort of tortures they subjected him to. Could hold out until John found him. But there, strapped to the platform under the giant stone wings, he'd found himself spilling every detail like a heartfelt confession, like a weight he'd longed to get off his chest and was finally able to set free: the Book, the Library, the Foundation's mission, his own powers, his team…

It had been the biggest security breach they'd ever had to face, and the reason they'd had to flee the Library and establish a new base of operations, hiding under new aliases as the Foundation and The Order vied for power over the city at large and both sides tried to lay their hands on Finch again. Because until that night, none of them—not The Order or the Foundation or the little upstart group that The Order had ended that night—had known exactly what they were dealing with. What Harold could do for them, if they got him under their control. A man who could identify on sight the anomalous properties of any item… Harold was practically the Holy Grail.

The only reason Harold was walking free was that John had managed to get there before Greer could arrange for a domination collar to be brought over. John didn't doubt for a second that they had one; more than one had gone missing from the Foundation labs back while he was still a field operative. Put that around Harold's neck, and his powers would be theirs to abuse.

Shaking off the horror of that scenario, John flipped the page.

Shaw, face dispassionate as she tried to save her partner, already beyond help—a spiral wiggle had bored a hole straight through his brain. Harold and John had tried to find them in time, but their late arrival only convinced Shaw that they'd _meant_ for him to die. Her lack of emotions didn't prevent her from nursing grudges; it had taken them quite a few meetings for her to get over that initial mistrust.

John flipped yet another page and had to blink back tears at the sight of Jessica, banging her fists against the inside of a TV screen; that had been a case before he'd joined Finch, before he'd even come home. Before he'd escaped, unexpectedly alive, from the mission the Foundation had expected to kill him. He hadn't even realized, at first, that she'd been trapped inside an anomaly; he'd learned that from Harold, eventually, and at a bad time for Harold to be telling him that there was absolutely nothing that could be done. None of Harold's tricks could bring her out again.

He'd walked out after that revelation. Briefly, but he'd walked out. Couldn't handle it, not when he was still reeling from Carter's death. (He still had to think of it as a death, because the reality was too much for him.)

And there she was, on the next page… being pulled through a mirror as gunshots shattered the glass. Finch had been horrified to see that one, since he knew the consequences of breaking the conductive element mid-transfer. He'd gone off to see to her safety personally—all the more urgent since it was a case they'd already set her on, so anything that happened to her would have been their fault. Thankfully, that shattered mirror was another vision that had never come to pass.

They wouldn't have even seen the warning if Shaw hadn't been idly browsing the Book while waiting for Finch to dig up some info. Sometimes—rarely—something they did changed the circumstances enough that it generated a second prediction. It had taken them a while to figure that out. Part of Nathan's job, now, was to periodically check the Book during cases, just in case; it was the most useful thing he could do other than research.

 _tp tp tp tp tp_

Nathan was tapping his foot, standing there on the desk, his crossed arms and crumpled expression conveying impatience better than John himself could pull off.

"What?"

Without lungs, Nathan couldn't sigh, but the slight collapse of his body conveyed that pretty well, too. He flipped back through a few dozen pages, then pointed firmly at the image.

John rubbed his forehead and closed the Book—right on Nathan's outstretched arm, the heavy pages pulling him down, knocking him off his feet. Struggling a bit, Nathan pulled himself free before John could think to open the Book again; he looked up at him, his garish burlap face crinkling into a frown.

"Sorry, Nathan," John said. "Did I hurt you?"

Nathan tapped his chest with the side of one mitten-hand— _fine, fine_ —which was the sign they'd worked out for "I'm okay." It wasn't like little felt mittens were designed with articulation in mind; Nathan had to resort to a small collection of obvious signs and, when he wanted to convey a more complicated message, typing or (even slower) scrawling it out on paper.

"What is?" John asked.

After a pause, Nathan tapped _fine_ again, then folded his arms and tapped one hand against the other elbow for a moment. Then, as the Book closed, he shook himself, patted his yarn-hair while doing his rag doll best to glare, and stalked off to his laptop.

The last of the windows went down, and Harold sighed, glad to have nothing more to handle tonight. For a moment, he sat silent, hands on his thighs; then he pushed his chair back and carefully got to his feet.

Turning around, he rested one hand gently on the back of the chair, closing his eyes as if to listen for something. John waited, patiently.

"I'm certainly ready to call it a night," Harold said, one of his rare smiles gracing his face.

For a long moment, though, they stood there, the only sounds being the whirr of the computer fans and the slow, laborious tapping of Nathan's typing.

Then John grinned, stumbling a little as he headed for the stairs.

Harold glanced over at the desk, where Nathan was busily browsing. "Nathan, will you be coming with me tonight?"

Not even looking up, Nathan waved him off.

"All right. Good luck with… whatever you're researching. I'll see you tomorrow."

John frowned. "Oh, and don't forget that we're almost out of—"

Harold smiled at him. "Thank you, Mr. Reese. I'll remember."


	2. Memoria

The long day was finally drawing to a close as a rather soggy Harold limped down the steps to the subway. He felt exhausted, as he always did when they'd had no choice but to step aside and watch innocent people get carted away. But invisible mold wasn't something they could tackle on their own; it required quarantine, and the victims were already as good as dead.

The Foundation would doubtless experiment on them before it terminated what was left of them and carefully disposed of the remains. But as much as Harold hated to contemplate those experiments, they were the only way to find some hope of recovery—if not for these victims, then possibly for victims to come. Maybe, in time, they'd figure out how to eradicate the threat for good.

And things could have gone much, much worse.

Antimemetic threats could hide in plain sight. Strictly speaking, the mold wasn't invisible; it simply tricked the brain into ignoring it. Even weak mnestics could counter the effect, but there was a simpler solution: some layer of tech between the mold and your eyes. A camera revealed it easily enough; of course, if you were taking pictures of the area, you'd have already been exposed. And an outbreak in Mount Kisco could have quickly spread to surrounding areas and out across the entire state, with no one the wiser until days later, when entire households began to drop dead—and the mold moved to a new contagion vector, that of the first responders.

Were it not for the Book alerting Harold to the threat, and the speed with which he'd redirected that information to the Foundation… well. Harold turned his mind to less disturbing thoughts.

* * *

Besides calling in the Foundation, there hadn't been much else to do today. A couple of random cases, not particularly difficult—although his bruised hip still ached from smashing it into a marble countertop while they'd been evading a rather energetic floating barstool. Overall, their situation hadn't changed much: Shaw was still missing; Elias was still hiding from The Order. John's role on the police force ensured that they had an inside man now that Carter was… gone.

And Harold? Masquerading as a professor, so that he could go about in public and buy supplies like a regular person, flying under the radar of the groups who were after him. Since they'd fled The Order and gone into hiding (well, into a different kind of hiding; Harold had been in hiding since he was seventeen), he'd had to adjust to the loss of the Library's safety and comfort, along with any number of anomalous items that had made things easier on them. The cornucopia that generated endless amounts of food, just for starters; last year had been the first in decades where he'd actually had to buy groceries.

At least Nathan hadn't sent him to get more dog treats. Lately, the former CEO's requests had gotten increasingly bizarre. Just a few days ago, he'd texted them a list of supplies, insisting that it couldn't wait until morning. So they'd split up: John had stopped at the hardware store while Harold went for the groceries and a bath towel. By the time Harold had made it to the subway, John had already assembled some sort of slingshot, bolted to the corner of the desk.

 _Have you been getting particularly bored?_ Harold had wanted to ask—but hadn't, because it wasn't like Nathan had the most extensive list of entertainment options. It would be churlish to deny him whatever little pleasures he could concoct for himself, even if that meant indulging his bizarrely creative side. Or looking the other way when he wired away some of their limited funds.

Or—each evening that week—filling a bowl with dog food, and setting it on the floor. Harold had begun to wonder if Nathan was simply lonely, enough to be hinting that they ought to get him a pet… but he'd been staying in the subway station by choice, for a good week and a half, when he could have gone home with either of them at any time.

Then again, maybe it was at the Book's behest; there were times when the Book gave inscrutable directions that were best followed, even if you didn't understand them (Harold had learned that the hard way, long before he'd even met John).

At least Nathan had been pleased with the slingshot design, and immediately put it to use with a tennis ball. He'd pulled back the little sling, straining until it slipped from his mitten-hands and the ball went flying out the door.

"I'm not gonna get it back for you," John had said, dryly, but Nathan had just waved him off, and indicated through pantomime that Harold could put the towel on the floor beside the steps. The towel was a further mystery: Since becoming a rag doll, Nathan had certainly developed an extreme aversion to getting dirty or wet, but that meant that he didn't _need_ a towel. And it didn't explain how the other towel had gotten all muddy.

* * *

Tonight, Harold and John had dropped by the station at Nathan's request, without needing to pick up supplies this time. And as soon as they were inside, he indicated the screen: _Take me up to the street. Need to meet someone._

Harold knew that Nathan was nearly as careful with their secrecy as he was—for obvious reasons—but it was still a bit alarming to think of him summoning people to their hideout. But when John pressed for more information, Nathan simply typed out _I'll answer questions when we get back._

At the vending machine entrance, Nathan had them pause for a moment before letting them close the machine. Before they reached street level, he climbed into John's shirt, poking his head out to offer directions.

Two blocks down, they found a little outdoor dining area, and… Leon Tao. The changeling got to his feet, looking worried even before John glared at him.

"What are you up to this time, Leon?"

"Hey, I resent the implication that I'm always up to something," Leon protested. "That's, I dunno, _species-ist_ or something, just 'cuz I'm Fae. And, for the record, you called _me_." He pushed a small cardboard box into Harold's hands. "It wasn't so easy to get those, either, so you might be a bit more grateful."

Then he knelt down and started waving his hands through the air. "I'm glad to see you, buddy," he said with a grin.

"Clearly," Harold replied, raising an eyebrow.

Leon looked up, studying the two of them, his eyebrows drawn together. "So you two really… you can't even see?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Right. Uh." He scrambled to his feet again. "It said not to mention that. Never mind."

"You're being weird, Leon," John muttered.

"Hey, I'm not the one who asked the world to get weird. I'm just trying to survive, here, and maybe do you guys a favor."

"Since when do you do favors without getting something in return?"

"Since never?"

Nathan tapped John's chest, and held out a little piece of folded paper, which John handed to Leon.

"Oh, uh… guess you're Nathan, then? Looking better, buddy. Um." He opened the paper, and read it. "Oh, wow. Uh. Thanks! Don't worry, I'll take good care of him. Hope you guys… um… hope it's not permanent? Anyway, see you later. Come on, boy!" he finished cheerfully, and headed down the street, leaving the two of them a bit befuddled.

Before they could discuss the odd encounter, Nathan waved to get Harold's attention, and motioned _go back home now._

* * *

Back in the subway, John set Nathan on the desk. Nathan motioned at the box that Harold was still holding— _open_ —and then toddled over to the laptop, plopped down on the desk, and pulled the split keyboard onto his lap. Now that he had a decent way to reach all the keys, his efforts to communicate went much faster. Nothing like normal typing speed, but definitely an improvement.

The box held a small tin, which Harold opened, revealing two odd-shaped turquoise pills.

Mnestics. Startled, Harold glanced over at Nathan, then up at the monitor displaying his chat window.

 _It's not affecting me yet, but I think that's bcuz I'm not human anymore._

"What's not affecting you?" Harold asked, as his stomach turned to ice from the implication alone. The next words weren't so much revelation as instant confirmation:

 _Something's making you forget things._

Without hesitation, Harold dry-swallowed one of the pills, handing the other to John without taking his eyes off the screen. The low-grade headache was almost instant—confirmation that the mnestic was trying to counter effects that were too strong for it.

 _I've been trying to figure out what's going on. Even the Book doesn't know._

"Finch, what did you just give me?"

"A mild mnestic," Harold replied. "It's not enough, I'm afraid, but it should keep us focused for a little while." He'd ask how Nathan arranged for the delivery, but they really didn't have time to waste. "We'll have to see if Elias has access to more effective variants… assuming we can stay aware of the need long enough to get them."

Taking out his phone, he—stared at the spiderwebbed screen; right, he'd dropped it during the altercation with the anomalous barstool. "Mr. Reese, I'll need your phone," he said, pulling the Book to the center of the desk and opening it. "What's going on? How much have I forgotten?" John pressed the phone into his free hand. "How much have _we_ forgotten?"

As he tapped out a message, he saw the Book's reply scroll out in his peripheral vision. He tucked the phone away to center his attention on the Book.

 _Antimemetic hazard_ , the words inked across the page in fancy letters, line upon line.  
 _Serious_  
 _Ongoing_  
 _Threat to Head Librarian_  
 _Threat to Primary Assistant_

 _Origin: Unknown_  
 _Confer with Research Assistant_

Harold turned to Nathan. "Make it fast; if we don't find more mnestics within five hours—"

Without looking back, Nathan tapped his temple: _I know_. Then he started typing again.

 _Antim aversion to thots of forgotten beings. You've lost at least 2._

Harold swallowed.

 _Pointless to try to discuss them. We're doing what we can to take care of them._

"So they're still alive? unhurt?"

 _So far. Don't think about them; it seems to make the effect bleed out across other info._

"Dear Lord." Infectious amnesia.

"Are others affected, or just us?" John asked.

Before Nathan could respond, the Book scrawled out a list of names:

 _Head Librarian_  
 _Primary Assistant_

 _Sameen Shaw_  
 _Constanza Moreno_  
 _Dani Silva_

"Wait, hold on." John leaned in over the Book, fully alert. "That's confirmation that she's alive, right? Shaw's alive?"

 **Status:** _Alive_  
 **Location:** _Out of Reach_  
 **Priority:**

"Less than our current predicament," Harold cut in. "Mr. Reese, I appreciate your desire to find Miss Shaw, believe me. But I have consulted the Book on her behalf repeatedly, and all it can tell me is that she lies outside our sphere of influence. For all we know, she could be in another dimension. I've directed it to let me know if there is anything we can do to assist her, but, for the moment… we have to focus on attending to _this_ threat."

"If she's still out there—"

"I am no less concerned for her safety than you are, Mr. Reese, and I would be delighted to see her safely returned to us. But we haven't the time for a detour. Shaw might well be the next person we forget. Or perhaps the threat will have taken us out before we're in a position to help her. Surely you can see—"

"All right," John ground out. "So who else is affected?"

 _Louis Azarello_  
 _Iris Campbell_  
 _Carl Elias_  
 _Timothy Kane_  
 _Alonzo Quinn_  
 _Philip Womack_  
 _Janet Dyer_  
 _Lee_

The list kept growing: a lot of cops, and a few random civilians, some of whom John didn't even recognize. "Damn. How fast is the effect spreading?"

 _Variable_ , the Book said, wiping out the list. _Unpredictable_.

"Who could best help us with this problem?" Harold asked.

 _Carl Elias_

"Elias?" John confirmed. "Now there's an odd pear."

"Also, he's already affected," Harold observed. "Whatever the hazard is, it doesn't prevent people from working to stop it. Or remedy it. We should head off to meet Elias immediately; he's still at the safe house."

"Should I leave a sign here? In case we get sidetracked and need reminding?"

"Mr. Reese, if this things stops us before we've even gotten new mnestics, it's likely too late to do anything. That's probably why the Book didn't tell us earlier." He quickly began packing up Nathan's laptop and phone, keyboard and stylus.

"Fair enough." John scooped up Nathan and tucked him inside his shirt, then grabbed the Book. "Let's go."

* * *

John drove, and he evidently understood the need for haste, which made Harold glad to be securely buckled in. He was seated in the back, with the Book open across his lap, and the front seat pushed forward as far as it would go, so that Nathan, tucked into the back of the seat cover, could still communicate. The Book's answers were always images and lists of data, and simple, often cryptic messages; it wasn't really able to display anything approaching a normal language.

"How long ago did you notice the effect?"

 _9 days_  
 _2 hours_

Glancing to the side, Harold considered. "May 23rd. The wedding, right? Was there… anything special that happened that day?"

Nathan pointed at Harold, wiped his forehead, and then circled one hand, pointing up: _You forgot someone._

"Besides that."

Nathan shrugged. Harold glanced at the Book, but there was just a slight flux in the color of its pages, a sign that Harold had learned to interpret as a shrug as well.

"And between then and now, we forgot someone else? A friend?"

The page flashed a deep red: _Danger_.

"Right. But if we can't discuss the people we forgot—"

"Why not?" John asked, glancing at Harold through the rear-view mirror.

Harold blinked. "Haven't you ever worked with infohazards before?"

"Basic training," John said. "Learned ways to spot victims and avoid becoming the _next_ victim."

"Then you know the basics. I take it you never went high in the ranks?"

John shook his head. "They make everyone take aptitude tests, but I never qualified for the nonphysical hazard stuff."

"Well. The fact of the matter is, some of the most dangerous anomalies in existence are just… ideas. Information. I'm not saying that in a symbolic way, like 'there's nothing more dangerous than a man with an idea'; the knowledge _itself_ can be lethal—or _worse_. There are some areas of investigation that have been documented as simply 'this road of inquiry is too dangerous to pursue.'"

"Because of all the bodies?"

"Something like that." Harold hesitated. "I assume you're familiar with memetic hazards? Infectious information?"

"Of course."

"The opposite effect is an _antimemetic_ agent: self-censoring data. Info that doesn't want to be known. Objects and entities that can't be seen, felt, perceived… effects that strip the data from your mind as soon as you turn away, or sometimes before it can even reach your brain.

"An entity with antimemetic shields is even worse than an invisible creature, because it can force your brain to not pay attention to it. With an invisible creature, you might spot its footprints or see an object that it's carrying around, but antimemetic effects will make your mind slide right off, ignore the obvious. It's like it shuts down your ability to make logical inferences about anything that has to do with it."

"Which is what happened to us?"

"Antimemetic hazard—that's what the Book said."

"So whatever it is could be right here in the car with us, and we wouldn't even realize it?"

"Exactly. The fact that we can even discuss the effect is due to the mnestics, and that's only going to last for a few hours."

"And this thing, whatever it is, has made us forget people?"

"The memories may be gone—destroyed, eaten, transferred… unrecoverable. Worst case. Best case, they're suppressed: Still there, but unable to be accessed until the antimemetic effect has been dealt with."

"So if we get a strong enough pill, it'll stop the ongoing effect and restore whatever memories haven't been destroyed."

"Not all mnestics are pills, but… yes. Essentially. We'd be able to see what's being hidden from us, and access those memories that are being suppressed. At least until the mnestic wears off."

"So what was the point of the headache pill?"

Harold chuckled at the description, though without much energy. "A low-tier mnestic counters the mildest antimemetic effects, and basically keeps us from getting sidetracked from our mission. Which is what some of these threats do: Get us so focused on something else that we forget the need to take basic countermeasures until it's too late. If Elias can't help us find a supplier, we might end up back where we started, oblivious to the active threat."

"How do you know so much about this, anyway? I worked for the Foundation for twelve years—five of them at Sigma level—and most of this is news to me."

"I've… had sufficient reason to delve into the subject. More than most."

"Oh?"

* * *

For a long moment, the car was silent. As the silence stretched on, John wanted to glance back at Harold, but the traffic was too tight for him to dare.

When John fished for information about Harold's past, he rarely got it; Harold found ways to skirt around the question, or just moved the conversation in another direction. The exchanges had become almost a dance between them, so the silence—revealing how touchy a subject he'd broached—was unexpected.

But it was almost more surprising when Harold finally spoke. "There's a little town in Iowa," he murmured, haltingly, almost painfully, "where approximately one fifth of the population has… forgotten me. More than simply forgotten: They're incapable of perceiving me. Like I'm an utterly foreign concept, and their minds just can't deal with the reality that is Harold Tu— that is _me_. I've been ripped from their brains so thoroughly that they can't even read the messages I write.

"And I spent decades trying to figure out if it's possible to undo that effect. For all I know, it's permanent.

"You see, Mr. Reese, an antimemetic agent is more than mere amnesia: It actively prevents your mind from realizing the loss. Trying to challenge that memory loss, to re-teach the suppressed concept… like Nathan said, it can cause even greater damage, because the effect can bleed out and infect related memories."

"So our first step has to be to counter the effect."

"Precisely. Hence, the mnestics, so we can figure out what's affecting us and _how_ to counter it."

The ride was silent for a while, as John mulled over the information. "So what exactly happened?" he asked, after a while. "To make them forget you?"

Again, Harold's silence was telling. Eventually, he took in a breath, and said, "The first time I ever encountered an anomaly, I was seventeen."

John glanced at him in the mirror; Harold had his eyes closed, as if in pain.

"It's the event that started the rest of my life. Sent me on the run. Gave me these powers. But at the time… it was just a weird thing that I found in the woods. Something like the stump of a huge tree, burned by lightning, with a giant crack running down one side. Inside, there was something… shining… so I… I followed my curiosity.

"That place… stretches out in odd ways. My first encounter with extradimensional space. It was, in the strictest sense of the word, fascinating. The things I found… I haven't the vocabulary to _begin_ to describe them to you. I doubt I could even picture it as I'm doing now without the mnestics helping me get a grip on the memory."

"So what made the town forget you, anyway? Just going through that place?"

The pain on Harold's face got a little sharper. "Ah… no. It was the… the entity that I found in there." His voice had gone slow and halting, as if trying to recall a dream. "There was this… not exactly a room, but… and when I entered it, I must have triggered something, because the whole place lit up. Not with light. With… awareness. Everything around me, every minute detail, in all directions, was visible whether I was looking at it or not; I was aware of it all.

"And the… the _being_ that was there… not a creature; it's not physical. It wanted me to… to teach it things. To let it into my mind, so it could understand the creature who had come to visit it. And I"—he swallowed heavily, gazing out the window—"with no real conception of what I was doing or what it meant, I… I let it have a full understanding of _me_."

Harold took a deep, shuddering breath before he could press on.

"It took me years to piece together what it had really done; even now, I'm not sure that I fully understand. But it appears to have reached out across some thread that connects memories—not just within _my_ head, but the connected memories of every person who had ever come into contact with me for more than the most superficial interaction. It took those memories for itself, so that it could better understand me. And then it… it gave me a gift, in return. The ability to intuitively understand mechanical and anomalous objects, just by looking at them."

"The power that makes you the most wanted man in the world."

"Indeed."

"It didn't actually mean to make people forget you, then."

"I believe that the… entity… is used to trading concepts the way that we trade objects and services. And it enjoys the sensation of newness, of surprise, so the loss of memories is a perk; the suppression effect, and inability to relearn the memory, seems to affect only humans."

"So when you left that place…"

"I'd been forgotten," Harold said tightly. "Entirely. By everyone who had ever known me. My friends, my teachers, our neighbors… they couldn't see me. My father lived the rest of his life believing that he'd never had a son."

John glanced his way, but Harold was rigidly staring out the window, chin trembling ever so slightly. Not knowing what to say, he just kept driving, and gave Harold room to talk.

"I had to run," Harold said, eventually. "Because the Foundation hunts people like me… people with powers. And because I knew things about their operations. That's why I was thrilled to find the Library, which kept me safe, and the Book, which was able to point me at the kind of anomalous objects that could make it easier to stay hidden. And, of course, the rest of the Library's collection, which let me research almost any topic I needed info on… including anomalies that affected memory.

"I'm surprised they found you that quickly; the Foundation wasn't quite so efficient when _I_ worked for them."

"Oh, they didn't pick up my scent for _decades_. I was lucky. Luckier than most."

Puzzled, John frowned. "Then… how did you know to run from them?"

Harold met John's eyes in the mirror and smiled dismally. "It's almost funny. The Foundation apparently found this… anomalous object… and they stuck it right in the center of one of their biggest labs. Never realized it was a sort of camera… only it's more than that. You step inside the—the viewing chamber, I suppose—and it's like you're standing wherever that spy unit is. And, again, your awareness of the world around you is far more than just visual… and it isn't stopped by walls. It's… overwhelming, until you learn to focus in on specific details.

"From that unit, I could see almost the entire lab, every detail. I could read their documentation, hear them talk about their mission. What their true objectives are, and how far they're willing to go to achieve them. Such callous disregard for the welfare of living, sentient, sapient creatures.

"I could hear the screams… and worse. I was fully aware of every sensory detail, of every inhuman procedure they were performing on the creatures they've captured, on the _people_ …"

" _God_ , Finch," John breathed. When he'd been inducted into the Foundation, they'd carefully coached him for _weeks_ , acclimating him to the cruelty in stages, debriefing him on its 'necessity' until it all seemed normal and unavoidable. And he'd been a soldier in his late twenties, there by choice, not a teenager suddenly thrust into a world he should never have encountered in the first place.

"A lifetime of horror in moments, before I could wrench myself free. I'm honestly shocked that it didn't have some obvious effect on my sanity."

"From what you've told me before, you probably had PTSD for a while."

"I wouldn't doubt it. And, from that day to this, there hasn't been a single waking moment where I haven't been aware of the Foundation. It's like knowing that there's a snake in the room.

"But there, at _that_ moment, I knew only that I had to flee. Had to get loose and run back to what was home, what was familiar. I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into my bed and hide under the covers until I could convince myself that it had been nothing more than a very bad dream."

Harold's breaths were coming faster now, caught up in that memory.

"I… made it back to town. My head was whirling, and… you know how you've been trained to be aware of every weapon in the room? Imagine if they were all lit up like neon signs, only, instead of weapons, it's every machine that's under a certain level of complexity. Every light switch, every doorknob… it took me _ages_ to learn to control my mind enough to push some of that out of my conscious awareness.

"Anyway, I… I dropped by the local diner. Just for a drink, a chance to clear my head. I sat at the bar, and the waitresses there… at first I thought they were just busy, because they both ignored me. Wendy and Luanne. Usually they had a smile for me, a wave, even if they couldn't get to me right away, but… I must have waited twenty minutes before I started trying to get their attention, and it was like I wasn't even there.

"When I finally…" He swallowed. "I, ah, I'm afraid I shouted at one of them. She didn't even startle.

"That's when I realized that something very bad had happened, but I didn't yet know just what it was. I showed up in the mirror behind the counter, so I wasn't invisible. Various people noticed me as I hurried home. But the pattern was getting obvious: The people who noticed me were strangers. The ones who ignored me were… everyone else.

"And when I finally got home…" He drew in a shuddering breath, and then another.

Nathan pulled himself out of the seat cover elastic and tumbled down onto Harold's lap, wrapping both arms around his wrist: a tiny hug. Harold sighed and smiled down at his friend.

"I spent that evening," he continued, softer, "watching a dad who couldn't see me. I went to bed hoping that the effect might be gone when I woke up; when I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of running through town, being chased by rotting trees, with all of my friends ignoring me as I screamed for help.

"The whole next day, I shadowed my dad, hoping against hope that the effect might be… temporary, might be…" He shook his head. "A family friend dropped by to help him fix the tractor. Walked right by me without even noticing. I sat by the garage door and… listened to them chat while they worked. Listened to them talk about a life where I'd never existed.

"That evening, I sat at the table and just watched my dad eat. I didn't have the appetite to join him. Spent time memorizing his face. Then he got ready for bed, and I… I just left. I had no allies, no resources… just the college fund that my dad had been saving up for me since before I was ten. It was enough to keep me afloat until I managed to create a new identity for myself.

"So that's why I've studied the kind of anomalies that can affect memory and awareness. That's how I got roped into this world: A curious mind just a little too open to the unknown."

"Explains why you're so paranoid," John murmured, gently.

"You never knew me at the height of my paranoia," Harold countered. He cupped Nathan's cheek with one hand; Nathan pressed into it, wrapping his arm around it as well and nuzzling in. "It's a miracle that Nathan was able to bring me out of that shell… first with his patience, and later with his trust, and then…" His voice grew choked. "With his sacrifice. Before Nathan… you really have no idea."

* * *

By the time they reached the safe house, Elias was waiting, on alert, ready to move. As John stopped to secure the door, Harold limped down the stairs and handed over the Book.

Elias handed him a tiny, coral-colored tablet and a small cup of water. "Drink up!" he said, his smile grim. "The headache's barely noticeable."

Knowing from experience how far that was from the truth, Harold huffed and swallowed the mnestic, then turned. "What threat level are we dealing with?"

Elias frowned. "I could get you Tier Fours, but I don't know anyone who stocks Tier Fives. That's a Foundation exclusive."

"With good reason," Harold said, with a look of distaste.

Joining them, John set Nathan gently on the little table and accepted his own mnestic from Elias. "I might be able to infiltrate my old workplace, but it'd be tough."

"Tier Fives are the byproduct of Anomalous Location Zeta-Iota-90," Harold countered, "which requires the sacrifice of Theta-class prisoners. They don't even get the luxury of dying."

"If the threat is grave enough—" John began.

"— _and_ the pills have long-term effects on personality and sanity. The Foundation uses them because they can stand to lose operatives; we can't."

"Then we stick to Fours," John said. "At least we can stave off the memory effect—"

"If the memories are merely suppressed, it'll help, but if they're being moved or destroyed, all Fours can do is keep us aware of the effect itself and focused on our mission. If we don't have an end game, we're just treading water until we drown."

"What, then?"

Harold took a deep breath. "We get the Fours first, for all of you. Elias, you can give us directions to your old supplier, maybe some leverage?"

"Well, I _could_ ," Elias agreed, making a moue. "But it takes them a bit to warm up to new customers. Since time is of the essence, it's best that I go with you."

"There's a reason you're in here," Harold protested. "With The Order hunting for you, I can't guarantee your safety if you leave the wards."

"Harold," Elias drawled, warmly. "I never asked you to guarantee _anything_. And with a threat like this, I'm hardly safe just sitting here; you do need all the help you can get."

Harold took a deep breath, then nodded. "All right. And then… once we've all got Fours in our system… I know where a Tier Seven is."

It was John's turn to frown. "Tier Sixes are lethal, and you want to try an even higher grade?"

"Used correctly, it has no long-term side effects. It's definitely safer than a Tier Six, unless I hold onto it for too long."

"Hold— it's not a pill?"

"Not all mnestics are medicinal; I told you that. This one happens to be an artifact."

"What's the catch?" Elias asked. "You wouldn't be using me as a supplier if you had access to better stuff without any downside."

Harold ducked his head in acknowledgement of the point. "It can only be used by one person at a time. It's incredibly disorienting _and_ painful. It provides _too much_ information—you all know my aversion to over-precise knowledge, and not without good reason. But none of that matters right now. The chief difficulty would be… it's part of the Library."

The Library they'd fled two years ago, when The Order had moved in. John closed his eyes, trying to imagine any path that didn't involve unconscionable risk.

"And this is the best plan you can think of?" Elias wiped a hand over the bottom half of his face. "Harold, I'm not seeing the best chances here."

"We don't have much choice."

"Even supposing that one of us could sneak into the Library and bring this thing back to you—"

"Unfortunately, it's not portable. I'll have to actually be inside the Library itself."

"No," John growled, instantly. "No way in hell."

"What's the alternative, Mr. Reese? This isn't something you can shoot, or Elias can negotiate with. We don't even know what we're dealing with. Even if the Book tried to tell us more about it, we wouldn't be able to perceive the information. It's probably been trying to tell us for— Nathan, how long ago did you figure out that we were ignoring the threat?"

With both hands, Nathan signed _a week and a half_.

"So the most it can tell us is that it's too powerful for what we have now. And if we don't stop it, who knows how far it'll go? There are whole towns that have forgotten how to process grain, or how to tell time, or the entire concept of first aid. We've forgotten a couple of people, but what if this is just the first wave? What if it bleeds out across the city?"

"If it's that great a threat, shouldn't this be a Foundation matter?"

Harold looked at the Book. "You showed a list of people already affected by this thing. Is it specifically related to us—to our group—or are we just part of a larger effect?"

The Book floated there, silent.

"But you know which people have been affected."

It continued to float there, silent.

"A few dozen people is more than enough to justify getting the Foundation involved."

Turning to regard John, Harold frowned. "And what exactly would we tell them? 'Some people have been forgotten, but we don't know who'?"

"I'll turn myself in. They can stick their probes in _my_ head."

"Antimemetic effects aren't that easy to track down. Besides, even the best case has them haul in a few dozen innocent people whose only 'crime' is forgetting someone they once knew. And even if you were willing to go that far—which I'm _not_ —we don't even know which people have been forgotten. We only know that, in some capacity, they used to be part of this group, known to all of us. If the Foundation manages to counter the effect, we may have just pointed them at friends and allies—painted a target right on their backs."

John's face was a mask of contained fury, with a hint of panic. "Think about what you're asking, Finch. You want me to just walk you in there… hand you over to the tender mercies of The Order?"

"I realize it's risky, Mr. Reese, but with the Book along to tell us the best path, I believe we can manage to get in, make our way to the chamber of the Allseer, get the information we need, and get out again. Ideally, we'd cause some sort of distraction as well, ensuring that the bulk of the cultists are off site."

A smile spread across Elias's face. "You didn't think I was going to sit this one out, did you?"

Harold's brows drew together. "Elias, you know full well what a prize you would be for The Order—and what they intend to do with you if they catch you again."

"And it's time I pay them back for putting that collar on me the first time. But even if they capture me—and, believe me, I'm not going to make it easy for them—the most I can compromise is this safe house, and some basics about how you operate, roughly the same info they got out of me before. I know you don't like to think of people this way, but I'm an acceptable loss."

Harold glanced at the Book.

"See?" Elias said. "The Book agrees with me. Face it, Harold: I'm coming along. I've already lost two close friends; I'm not about to let a third walk into this kind of danger while I sit back and cower like a dog."

Fondly, Harold shook his head. "You are a better friend than I could have expected, back when we met. Despite our differences."

John let out a breath, surrendering to the idea; there was clearly no reasonable alternative. He felt outclassed by the threat, unarmed in a battle that took the type of weapons he wasn't trained in. But he would do whatever was in his power to protect Harold. "If that's how it has to be," he said, "then you're sticking to me like glue, Finch. No sneaking off on your own."

With an amused huff, Harold nodded. "That's settled, then."

The Book floated down to the table.

"Oh, of course," Harold said, then hesitated. John turned away, but Elias simply looked confused for a moment. Then he turned his back as well.


	3. Reflections

_**Note:** Apologies on the late upload; writer's block, procrastination, and some other factors have conspired to make this fic not achievable within October, as originally planned. However, have a super-long chapter to make up for the delay! (The super-long chapter that kept expanding is a large part of the reason for the delay. Sigh.)_

 _It's possible that the fourth part will be up late on Halloween or early on November 1st. Not at all sure that I can manage that, but I'll try. Sadly, that leaves not much time to appreciate this piece before things change_ … _._

* * *

"If we're gonna do this, we need to get a move on," John said, checking his SIG before tucking it away again.

Harold straightened up and nodded. "Yes, of course. Elias, do you need to grab anything before we go?"

A quick headshake. "I was prepped before you two got here." He glanced down at Nathan. "Sorry—you _three_."

Not looking at Elias, Nathan rubbed his little chest with one fist— _I'm sorry_. The burlap of his face was crumpled up, a troubled expression, as he waved his hands near his temples, palms out, negating the motion with a shake of his head ( _don't worry_ ).

Picking the Book up off the table, Harold frowned down at his friend. Eye contact was a big part of sign language, even if Nathan's eyes were merely big black buttons, but Nathan was signing without looking at anyone in the group. He even offered a directional sign pointed at no one in particular: one fist cupped in the other hand, thumb up ( _help you_ ).

"Come on, Gram, we gotta go," John said in his no-nonsense tone, and scooped the doll up to his shoulder with one quick motion. On the way up, Nathan tapped his wrists together ( _be careful_ ), but then he had to hang on as John headed for the door.

Odd. Well, at least he echoed the group's sentiment: Not a person in this room would let Harold walk into danger without doing their utmost to help him. And he would certainly be as careful as he could, given the circumstances.

* * *

The supplier turned out to be holed up in an abandoned school, somewhat incongruously named _Hope Elementary_. At the end of the hallway was a seemingly innocuous door with a fading sign: _Custodian's Closet_. Harold easily noticed the traps that would trigger if they tried to open it or break it down—but Elias merely strolled up to the door and tapped out a greeting.

"School's closed," came a voice from the other side. "No trespassing!"

"Open up, Raul," Elias called out, cheerfully. "I never properly thanked you for providing that ship in a bottle that trapped my father." He shot Harold a mischievous grin as a series of locks began clacking open on the other side. "Raul's got the connections you need to pick up high-grade mnestics. Or amnestics, personal or wide dispersal… interrogation drugs, recreational noms… or just about any other anomalous substance you might find yourself in need of."

The door opened; Elias entered fearlessly, greeting Raul with a cordial nod of his head. "Hello, Raul."

But when John cautiously stepped into the room, glancing around for threats, he suddenly stiffened up and went statue-still, staring straight ahead.

Alarmed, Harold stepped around him; his powers flashed a warning before he could lay eyes on the threat, even within his peripheral vision. But the warning also indicated that the sight hazard wouldn't be triggered by _him_.

Off to his right, Raul scoffed. "I'm not surprised that you're alive, Elias, but I never thought I'd see you running with these Foundation types."

"Harold is a friend," Elias said calmly. "John as well; he saved me from getting trapped by my own merchandise. Harold," he said, not taking his eyes off Raul, "is our friend all right?"

"It's not directly harmful or permanent," Harold mused aloud, studying the poster that had caught John's gaze. It hung from the ceiling, positioned to be the first thing you saw upon entry, if you looked straight ahead: a large black pattern across tan paper, circular and maze-like. The Foundation symbols in the corners meant nothing to him, and he doubted that he'd have even noticed them were it not for the mnestics coursing through his system.

John, of course, had been trained to respond to Foundation cues in certain almost instinctive ways. Which seemed to be how the design operated, triggering a compulsion to contemplate the patterns, so thoroughly that the effect couldn't be stopped even by breaking line of sight.

"This pattern traps Foundation agents?" he confirmed.

"You bring Foundation agents into my place of business, I defend myself," Raul said. "They're known to not look kindly on the peddlers of anomalous merchandise."

Harold turned to regard him. "But he hasn't been one of their agents in nearly five years."

"You don't retire from the Foundation," Raul countered. "And you'd be a fool to think he has."

"Hmm," Elias said. "That's possible, of course. Then again, these two have been instrumental in helping me dodge around the Foundation's movements. Even rescued me from The Order."

"Their sting operations get craftier," Raul said, unrepentantly.

"Given the amount of anomalous tech I moved when I was in full operation, and the fact that I had so many repeat buyers, it's a stretch to think that the Foundation had that much information on me and didn't put it to use. And, even if they were waiting for a bigger haul… when I went out of circulation last year, I wouldn't have been any further use to their operation. They would have brought me in."

"For questioning, perhaps," Raul allowed. "But if they already had so much information on your operations, perhaps they would not have wasted resources trying to get more information on you."

"And saved my life, kept me in one of their own safe houses? Come on, Raul. There's a limit to reasonable paranoia."

"You're hardly going to convince me of this, old friend. For all I know, you've been compromised yourself. Absent for months? Anthony and Bruce both mysteriously missing? If you—"

Suddenly it was Raul who had gone utterly still, eyes locked onto Elias's hand; Harold hadn't even seen Elias pull a weapon.

"I'm afraid we don't have time to convince you of the truth," Elias said, still with that incongruous amiability, "but I should warn you, Raul, that using the memory of my dearest friends is not a way to get on my good side… and certainly not when you're threatening _other_ good friends of mine. Now, if you would be so good as to release John, and then supply us with enough Tier Fours to last a week…"

"Elias," Raul said, softly, as if he hesitated to even breathe, "we are surrounded by sensitive anoms. If you… disturb them—"

"You think I haven't learned to control this thing?" Elias asked, almost surprised. "It's a little more difficult than it looks, but it's got some pinpoint accuracy. I could take out the pupil of your right eye without even touching your brain. I could shave your eyebrows from here."

Raul swallowed.

"Harold, have you figured it out yet?"

"The pattern needs to change," Harold said. "It's like a mental program; John's been told to study the pattern, and needs to be given different orders. It'll wear off in a few hours, but—"

"We can't wait that long. Raul?" Elias said, the threat in his voice coming a little closer to the surface.

"All right," Raul said dully. "Just flip the poster over."

Harold double-checked the new pattern, verifying that it wasn't harmful, before he set it up so John could see it. A second later, John was blinking, and looking around with the efficiency of an agent well trained in recovering from disorientation. Harold sighed with relief.

At Elias's command, Raul retrieved two bottles of something like eye drops, milky blue. With John keeping an eye on their host, Harold sat down and carefully leaned back so that Elias could get the drops in. Normally, he would handle such a task himself, but he'd found it particularly difficult to control his blink reflex when he was the one controlling the eye drop, and they needed to make sure that no one got an overdose—one drop per eye, not more.

The liquid felt icy, but not unpleasantly so. As he blinked them in and glanced about the room, he noted a few doors that he hadn't seen before—or, more precisely, hadn't paid attention to. Antimemetic shields for Raul's more important stock.

Raul was glowering from his chair. "They're addictive, you know," he said, after they all had their doses in. "When you finally need to go off them, it's not… gonna… be… fun." There was a dark amusement to his almost sing-song warning.

Looking down at the bottle, Harold frowned. "I knew that before taking them… but it's not as though we have a choice."

Raul blinked at him, then narrowed his eyes incredulously. "You've had these before? And you're still willing to take them?"

"We're all used to dealing with pain," Harold said with a frown. "And the immediate threat is far more pressing than the side effects; we'll deal with them when they come."

He'd known the list of side effects for multiple types of Tier Fours, but now, looking at the milky blue liquid, he knew these particular side effects at a far more immediate level—no longer mere book-learning.

"What side effects are we talking?" John asked Raul.

"Oh, blindness… nausea… palsy…"

Harold huffed with mild amusement. "Hardly. This substance allows you to see what you would normally ignore; when that goes away, the withdrawal symptoms kick in. You'll see things that aren't actually there, have that pins-and-needles sensation across your shoulders, and have to deal with face-blindness for a few weeks. Won't be able to recognize even your closest friends, not by facial features. If you try to push back the withdrawal effects by taking additional doses, it just gets worse."

"Oh?"

"Taking a second dose before the first one's about to wear off makes you functionally illiterate with any form of written language, though that's thankfully not permanent. Once you hit the fifth consecutive dose, your brain starts going a little weird… humans won't look like humans anymore, and many normal objects will look alien. You know how if you look at enough iterations of the same word, the word stops looking like a normal word anymore? It's like that.

"By the eighth dose, your brain has been irrevocably changed, and you'll fear the sight of eyes—any type of eyes, even cartoon eyes or everyday objects that _appear_ to be eyes. Like shoelace holes. And the face blindness becomes permanent."

"Nasty stuff," John mused, as he kept an eye on Raul; Harold was busy setting reminders on his phone and John's.

"How long before we need to take the next dose?" Elias asked.

"Twenty-nine hours, give or take; it changes a little with weight and hydration."

In addition to making an alarm on his phone, Elias wrote the info down on the side of his arm. "In case something happens to the tech," he pointed out, sensibly.

Harold made a moue and put a note on the inside of his cuff as well.

* * *

"It's too bad to lose him; I rather liked Raul," Elias said as they headed back down the hallway.

"He won't deal with you anymore, after this?"

"Oh, he'd deal with me as readily as anyone else… if I could _find_ him again. By the time we're done dealing with this situation, he's going to be in another state, if not another country. The man's hardly a fool."

"Dare I ask why he was so terrified? I couldn't get a good look at what you were holding."

Chuckling, Elias handed over a small device like a thumb-sized stapler. Harold studied it.

"You tricked him."

Elias grinned. "Sometimes the most effect measures are those that play on the imagination."

The device was anomalous, all right: It persuaded the one it was pointed at that it was a weapon, and the weapon's strength was based entirely on their fear. "Then… he was never really in danger."

"Oh, if that hadn't worked, I would have drawn my gun, instead. Never rely on only one tactic; always have a backup. Right, John?"

John murmured assent, too busy keeping an eye out for threats.

"Anyway," Elias said, as they reached the car, "it was a threat because he believed that I would only pull out a threat. And it was deadly because I persuaded him that it was deadly." He walked around, slid into his seat and buckled up. "You know, if I'd tried to shoot him with it, that would've shown it to be a lie, but until that point? I've never owned a more effective weapon."

Turning to look at Elias, Harold sighed, and then carefully tucked Nathan into the back of the seat cover before buckling himself in. "I suppose I can approve of a passive means of achieving that kind of persuasion."

"There you go, Harold. Learning to appreciate even the sort of tactics that you wouldn't use yourself. That's how a true leader uses all the assets at his disposal."

"Well," Harold said, "I'll have to take your word for it."

* * *

"Look down," Harold said abruptly.

Elias dropped his gaze instantly, and John, still driving, stared resolutely at the street right in front of them.

Shortly, Harold sighed. "We're clear; avoid the mirrors, Mr. Reese."

John took a quick right turn, breaking line of sight to whatever was behind them.

"What was that?" Elias asked, resisting the urge to check for himself; he'd learned to trust Harold's judgment on these matters.

"Visual cognitohazard, except that most people can't see it. It's not alive, not in the traditional sense, or my powers wouldn't pick up on it, but… it doesn't like being noticed."

"And it's roaming the streets of New York?"

"Well, flying above them, apparently. I don't know what it was or why it's here, only that we shouldn't look at it. With a little more careful study, I could figure out which level of mnestics reveals it."

"Think it's something to alert the Foundation over?" John asked.

"If the Book has never pointed us at it, then, presumably, it's not a serious threat. Most people driving through New York aren't under the influence of powerful mnestics."

"But if it's got an antimemetic field, would the Book even be able to warn us in the first place?"

"There are different kinds of antimemetic effects. That one doesn't prevent people from knowing about it; it simply prevents them from noticing it with their senses. We might have trouble locating it, but we could certainly go after it if we needed to."

"Good to know," Elias said, settling back into his seat. He frowned at Nathan. "Not that I would like to put our dear Nathan at risk, but… the cognitohazards don't affect him the same way, right?"

"He seems immune to whatever's been affecting us, not that that does us much good. As to other effects… we've encountered a few that didn't affect him, so I suppose it's possible that he's immune to the sort of mind-affecting forces that target humans. But we don't know which effects specifically target _humans_ … and, you're right, testing his capabilities out would be highly dangerous to him, and I'm not willing to put him at that much risk for what could be a very minor tactical advantage."

Elias made a moue. "I suppose we've only got the one."

"Indeed," Harold said, frowning. "That is part of what separates us from the Foundation: They're willing to sacrifice people for knowledge, and we're not."

Nathan, though, gripped the tip of one hand with the other and pulled it up, his crinkly smile amused. " _I'm unique_ ," Harold translated for Elias, thinking that Nathan might well have been laughing were it not for the fact that he didn't have a diaphragm to contract or an airway to let the sound out. Five years without laughter; it was a minor detail in the life that Nathan had been thrust into, but it did seem like a melancholy loss. And whether or not Nathan was bothered by that loss, Harold did miss sharing a laugh with him.

"That you are," Elias said to Nathan, grinning. Despite the one-way language barrier and their short acquaintance, it hadn't taken long for them to develop an easy affection for each other. Far from being troubled by Elias's criminal activities, Nathan enjoyed hearing tales of his outlandish misadventures; when the Book indicated a lull in anomalous events, Nathan often spent the night at the safe house, in an arrangement endearingly like a sleepover, complete with stories—because Elias, in turn, loved an appreciative audience and the chance to brag.

The darker side, of course, was that he was only bragging to Nathan because he'd lost his closest friends… and because, thanks to The Order, he'd been driven into hiding, no longer in the thick of his operations. While he certainly saw Harold and Nathan as friends by now, this closer relationship had come at great cost to the once mighty kingpin.

"Well," Elias said abruptly, "speaking of knowledge, shall we discuss tactics? Beyond it being a dynamic interdimensional space, you haven't told me much about this Library."

Harold took a deep breath. "To begin with, I assume you've got a favorite book?"

Elias chuckled. " _The Count of Monte Cristo_. It's the only reason I've ever been interested in French, although I didn't get very far with the language. Why?"

"Oh, the Library prefers people who have a deep connection to written material. The more you enjoy books, the more it tries to help you—and if you can't appreciate books, it won't even let you in. Your first time through, you should focus on a book that was personally meaningful to you."

"Wait, you can't even get into this place if you're illiterate?"

"You don't have to be able to read the written word to enjoy a book… though it helps. But, in the Library's estimation, the highest scholar isn't any better than a child embracing a picture book, or a teen with some untranslated manga or a graphic novel. What counts is deriving pleasure from the material, whether you're wading into a good story or increasing your appreciation of new concepts, new data about the world.

"The ones the Library resists are those who use books merely for cold data—those who've never read for the pleasure of either story or personal enrichment. In its eyes, such people aren't even _alive_."

"So the Library _itself_ is alive?"

"Well…" Harold considered. "I spent a couple of decades living there, and I was never able to determine for sure whether it met the criteria of a living being. Not a creature, certainly; as far as I can tell, it doesn't reproduce, and doesn't seem to need sustenance or excrete waste of any kind. And its communication style is… stunted, at best. But it does seem to have, if you'll forgive the expression, a mind of its own."

"Based on not letting people inside."

"Who it lets in, and how it helps them once they're inside. It was incredibly helpful to me; Nathan, not so much."

From the front seat, John chuckled. "Funny thing is, you know who it likes more than it likes Finch? Leon Tao, of all people. Started reacting to him like some sort of puppy dog."

Harold had to grin at the memory. "Oh, yes, it took a real liking to our Mr. Tao… apparently because he takes great delight in learning new forms of mischief, and has an unexpected fondness for the folk tales centered around King Arthur."

"Do you know, the last time I saved his life—that time that his Changeling nature got revealed—he got practically terrified at the thought of going back inside the Library. I thought it might be the charms, but he's probably more wigged out by the way things keep changing to help him, but never where he can observe the change."

Elias nodded thoughtfully. "So we can expect that the Library will welcome us, and perhaps help us to evade the forces of The Order?"

"I can't imagine that it would be any less attached to me. However, it's possible that the cultists will have endeared themselves to the Library as well; they appreciate amassing knowledge, if only to further their cause."

"Too bad they didn't start burning books," John mused from the driver's seat. "That place would've ousted them on its own."

Harold chuckled at the thought.

"I assume the entrance will be heavily guarded?" Elias continued, thoughtful. "I could lure them off for a while, though I'm not sure how long I could keep up the distraction."

"There are far too many entrances to guard," Harold said; "it's one of our few advantages. Entering the Library is as simple as finding a mirror, touching the glass, and desiring entry—if you're within range of where its dimension touches ours. Most of Manhattan, some part of Brooklyn, even a little bit of New Jersey. I haven't found a lower limit—you could access it through a mirror in the subway system—but the upper limit is about fifteen stories near the center, twelve near the outskirts."

"And they haven't just destroyed all the mirrors?"

"Oh, they've likely destroyed quite a number of them… but it's a large area, and their numbers are too limited to keep track of what private businesses and individuals are doing." He sighed. "I would have checked into it more thoroughly, but I'm a wanted man, and Mr. Reese was not pleased with the idea of me wandering around The Order's territory, regardless of the precautions I might take."

"So we just need to find a human-sized mirror… somewhere in Manhattan."

"It needn't be human-sized; I can pull myself right through a makeup compact, or even a mirror shard. That rather flummoxed Mr. Reese when he first started trying to trail me."

It was John's turn to chuckle at the memory: rounding a corner to find his quarry nowhere in sight, despite Finch's limp and low mobility and the lack of obvious hiding spaces. _And, Mr. Reese, we'll meet on my schedule. Not yours._

As Harold had explained to him later, while discussing the Library's capabilities: He'd simply ducked behind a car, finished the call, and then pulled himself through a car mirror and straight into the Library.

"Of course, we don't have time for you to get used to the mechanics," Harold continued, "so we'll need one at least big enough to crawl through."

Elias leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands. "Hard to believe you spent a few decades in this place. Doesn't sound like the most defensible location."

"It is, like me, defended far better through secrecy than through any direct show of force. Once that was broken… well, I've been doing my best to stay one step ahead of those who are after me, and the Library… it didn't have that option."

"So the only reason that The Order is maintaining a foothold here is that nobody else knows about the place? Sounds like a great time to point the Foundation at them… all that knowledge, a new interdimensional space to study, fewer resources to mess with everyone else." He frowned. "Unless you're more concerned by what the Foundation might do with the information."

Harold huffed. "They've known about it for just under two years. It's not the lack of knowledge that's keeping them away."

"Oh?"

"The Foundation, for all its power, does have a grasp on its own limitations. Some of them, at least. So long as The Order knows about the Library and has an equal desire to claim it, the fight alone would cost the Foundation more than it's willing to risk."

"How so?"

"It'd be too visible," John said. "The Foundation stays in power because they stay hidden—because they've learned to hide in plain sight. An agent in every police district, in every hospital; one in every major city, vetting new construction permits. Always on the lookout for undiscovered anomalies, for new victims, trying to capture them before the general public can figure out what's really going on."

"And they paint the truth-tellers as conspiracy theorists… though, I suppose, that's exactly what they are. Except that the conspiracy is real. The Foundation ensures that the ones who try to inform the public get laughed off as deluded fools. Because if word gets out of what they're really up to, their operations would become… untenable."

"You're telling me this place is harder to hide from the public than the 9/11 event?"

A quick grin crossed Harold's face, and he twisted his upper body to look directly at Elias for a moment. "You know, you're only aware of that cover-up because of the mnestics in your system. The few times I've mentioned it to you, you've ignored me."

"So their cover-up is working, even, what, fifteen years later? Seems like they've got access to the kind of amnestics Raul would kill to acquire. Literally."

John laughed darkly. "Where do you think those amnestics come from, anyway?"

Elias's brows drew together. "You're not saying—"

"To deliver amnestics on more than just a personal level, they need something that's easy to spread through water or air, and has few lasting side effects. Of the various substances they've encountered, there's only one that foots the bill, and that's gathered by Theta-class prisoners. They send a couple dozen into the portal, maybe seven or eight make it back, and not all of them are intact. So yeah, the Foundation kills for those amnestics, too. Why do you think they're so eager to seize whatever stocks the black market has acquired?"

"So it's more than just snatching up whatever anomalous items they can get their hands on."

"Given how much they rely on amnestics… some of their biggest operations would be utterly impossible without a steady supply. And they used up the majority of their stockpiles in the aftermath of 9/11. So their quantities are severely limited, and they're forced to make use of their more mundane solutions: misinformation campaigns, subtle legislation, blackmail, and so forth.

"They even punched holes in their own story—jet fuel burning hot enough to melt steel girders?—specifically to get the conspiracy theorists to accept the basic event, to believe that planes had been involved, and to focus instead on who was supposedly responsible, and what supportive measures might have accomplished the witnessed events."

"Except, of course, that the 'witnessed events' are remembered to be planes, instead of giant raptors having a fight through time and space."

"Precisely. So what they'd be looking at, if the Foundation tried to claim the Library, is a campaign of weeks before they could either destroy The Order or, at minimum, drive them out of the area. As you said, it's an indefensible location… and the Library itself doesn't take kindly to theft or bloodshed within its space."

"Now that's an odd thing for you to know, if nobody's breached the perimeter before. Did the Library kill someone to protect you?"

Brows drawn together, Harold closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. "Mr. Reese wasn't the first operative I recruited. After… after Nathan persuaded me to use the Book to help people, I found that I couldn't do so effectively on my own, and so I sought out… well, someone familiar with anomalies, but not attached to any existing group."

"A mercenary."

"Oh, yes. More so than I had anticipated. When he had gotten enough information on my treasures, he betrayed the man we were helping and tried to take off with a satchel of anomalous items—including the Book, and the notepad that Nathan was stuck in at the time.

"I… intervened, he struck me… and then, as I was falling, the Library… caught me with its own carpet, rising up so I didn't have so far to fall, and…" He swallowed. "It almost killed him. I think it would have, if he hadn't dropped Nathan and the Book and run for the nearest mirror; it threw him out, and peeled the satchel off him as it did. That's when I learned just how flexible the Library can be, when it isn't trying to hide its own nature, its capabilities. Normally, it won't even let you see it fetch books for you—they just seem to show up wherever you weren't looking at the time."

"I take it we'll need to handle the cultists in non-lethal ways."

"Certainly non-lethal; possibly with greater care than that. And be sure not to damage any books." He paused. "I imagine that if _they_ strike first, we've got the leeway to defend ourselves… but I can't be certain."

"And the Foundation has even less information than you do."

"Well… yes and no," Harold said with a sigh. "I certainly couldn't convey to them the sum total of my knowledge in words alone… but they did force me to reveal everything I knew. That's likely how the Foundation realized that they can't possibly contest The Order on these grounds while still staying out of the public eye."

Elias's eyes had gone wide as he stared at his friend. "I'm… impressed," he said finally. "That you're sitting next to me, instead of in one of their cells. Not many can escape the Foundation's grasp once they've been captured."

"It wasn't the Foundation who had me," Harold clarified. "It was The Order… or, more specifically, a false flag operation that The Order had put in place, and the people they'd duped into fighting for a cause that they didn't understand. But that group captured key figures in both The Order and the Foundation, so everyone in that room got the information that I was forced to reveal. Everything about our operations… everything about _me_. If John hadn't rescued me… I'd be in a collar by now, for one group or the other."

"And the world would come crashing down around us," Elias summarized. "Seize Harold Finch, and you've won the game for good."

"Which is why I don't like this plan," John growled from the front seat.

"Unfortunately, we don't have a choice," Harold said, knowing full well that John's objection was more than mere concern about the consequences to the world. "Without the Allseer, we have no way to learn what's been targeting us, and why, or how to stop it. It's no use trying to protect me from all known dangers when I might be the next person here that everyone forgets."

John pulled into a parking space, turned off the car, and gripped the steering wheel tight for a moment. Then he straightened up and pulled his SIG. "All right, then—let's go."

* * *

John had parked somewhat inside the perimeter; they were well in range here, and the first task would be to find a decent-sized mirror.

"Point of order," Elias asked as he tucked Nathan into his shirt, "but why didn't we just bring a mirror along?"

"We've brought three," Harold replied, gesturing at the rearview, "but we'll need something a bit larger to introduce you to the mechanics. And while they've probably learned to ignore car mirrors… well, the mirror has to stay stationary during the connection process; it takes a few minutes, and it's noticeable to those inside."

"Ah. We don't want to give them a heads-up."

"Indeed." With two prime targets in their group, they couldn't risk The Order learning of their approach in time to put up defenses… or get ready to capture them.

As they blended into the crowd, John took point (SIG carefully concealed but still in hand), with Elias lazily following a good ways behind, his sharp eyes keeping track of any threats that John might miss. Between them, Harold limped along at his normal speed, the strap of his bookbag digging into his shoulder. Despite the disguise scarf, Harold felt eerily like all eyes were on him.

Each teammate had his own method of spotting outliers: Harold could pick up on those with anomalous effects, John had the training to spot anyone from the major groups of interest, and Elias had plenty of experience noticing those who seemed the least out of place. So it was a little surprising that they didn't spot a single cultist… or agent… or anyone suspicious at all.

Harold itched to ask the Book what was going on, but he didn't dare reveal its existence in public; they'd have to wait until they were shielded.

Despite the likely futility, they checked a few public restrooms first. Still trying to avoid the impression that they were a group, they let Harold go in alone, while John and Elias kept an eye on their surroundings. The earpiece kept them connected in case of an emergency; an enemy wouldn't be able to capture Harold and escape from the only exit, and Harold was in disguise and confident about bluffing his way out of danger for at least a couple minutes… all of which didn't ease John's irritation with letting Harold out of his sight. Still, he didn't fuss too much: Harold could spot hazards that the other two couldn't, and John didn't want to be caught off guard like he had been at Raul's.

Harold was glad of their tactics when he spotted a cognitohazard in the second men's room.

Predictably, The Order had gotten rid of the mirrors—and left random tags to make it seem like gang activity. One of the tags was a Foundation symbol, again designed to piggyback on their instinctual training; Harold gave John a heads-up, and briefly considered dismantling it.

"What's it do?" John asked, staying outside for the moment.

"It'd make you avoid your own reflection. Which is, I would imagine, a rather effective deterrent."

"Leave it up. It reduces the chance of the Foundation getting a foothold in this area."

Harold nodded, then chuckled at himself (no one was around to see the nod), and left the symbol alone. They walked quite a ways before trying yet another restroom.

It was as they were leaving the fourth fruitless attempt, as Harold was already considering where else to look—regular shops were too obvious, and any mirrors they might have would be too exposed—that a sudden explosion rocked the city, setting off a few car alarms.

Then, before Harold could even orient himself, a second explosion. And a third, a fourth; people were already pulling out their phones, hurrying toward the explosions or away, a growing murmur of panic in the streets.

"Looks like someone's got a party going," Elias mused across the comm. "Fairly close, too."

"That's… odd timing," Harold rejoined. At least they could be sure it wasn't an anomalous event; the Book hadn't said anything about more events today. Unless it was shielded by a powerful aversion effect… but, in that case, they wouldn't be able to do much about it anyway.

"If it helps distract The Order, let's not waste the opportunity," John said. "Where we going, Finch?"

Pushing back into a corner where two types of stonework met up, Harold leaned on the wall to get a little weight off his back, and considered. Security mirrors wouldn't work; the employees would be specifically monitoring them. Same problem with the large mirrors that tried to make small restaurants look bigger than they really were. They needed something large, and hidden, a place unlikely to attract cultist attention, so that Elias had the time he needed to make use of it.

Surely a few people in the area owned large mirrors, but trying to locate the right homeowner would take far too long, and put them at even greater risk of discovery. But if not that… if not the regular shops, the restaurants, department stores… Harold glanced around at the nearby businesses, one after another useless. Maybe a hotel? He could rent a suite, hope that it had a full-size mirror, but that might—

Wait.

Across the street: an antiques shop.

A disquieting frisson tingled down his spine at the thought of braving an antiques shop again… his last encounter had been less than pleasant. Of course, this time he had three allies with him, two of them well versed in spotting and defending against the unusual; besides, they weren't going to run up against another case like the one he'd been tracking at the time, that beautiful face-stealing woman who turned people into trinkets.

Harold's dislike for antiques shops was less about danger and more about sensory overload… but he could put up with that.

Because a shop like this was likely to carry mirrors.

John went in first; Harold let a good minute pass before he steeled himself and stepped through the door.

The shop was crowded with merchandise, most of it perfectly normal—but, of course, Harold's powers weren't restricted to anomalies; they worked just as well on mundane equipment, screaming out to him what each item could do. A few items pulsed brightly with the warning of anomalous properties, waiting for him to suss them out if he got near enough to study them, but they were almost lost behind the more-than-visual cacophony of practically anything with moving parts: latches and hinges; dials, buttons, switches, and gears; all the clocks, the visible light bulbs and half-hidden clasps for clothing, phonographs, musical instruments, spray bottles… it had him reeling before he'd gone more than a few steps.

Sudden hands covered his eyes, and he stiffened up instantly, but Elias's lips were at his ear, whispering "It's visual, right? Close your eyes and keep a hand on my shoulder."

Nodding, Harold closed his eyes and reached forward as Elias stepped in front of him, guiding his hand. With his world thus restricted to the non-visual, Harold followed his friend's lead as they made it through the main floor.

"A few mirrors, but they're not that big," Elias murmured, just on the edge of hearing. "Music boxes and the like." Harold was glad that his eyes were closed; music boxes and watches had some of the most intricate mechanisms and, thus, the most information conveyed to him all at once.

Near the front of the shop, John was making small talk with whoever was running the counter, learning that the artwork was in the attic, the books and clothing on the second floor (including, she noted in a slightly louder voice, _some vintage Braille editions from the 1800's, in French, German, and English_ ), and the furniture and vintage appliances in the basement.

Harold risked a quick glance at the clerk, but didn't notice anything beyond the silver buckle on her cap and the hinges of her glasses. As John flirted—not much, but enough to keep the lady's attention—Elias led Harold toward the stairs.

Descending into the cool, musty darkness was disconcerting, but Harold managed it, one step at a time, relying on Elias's careful support to keep his balance as they went. Within moments, John had joined them, his quick and efficient steps nearly soundless.

Thankfully, they were the only patrons. The basement was quite secluded, and stuffed to the gills with random objects; Harold had risked another glance then gone back to letting Elias guide him around.

"Got one," came John's darkly triumphant growl, and soon Harold was blinking and squinting at a half-size mirror with a simple frame, set up in the back corner. Through the reflection, he could see a good portion of the floor; his powers didn't work through reflections, which was a relief. On the one side, vintage outfits and hanging rugs blocked the sight of the stairs; on the other, they were shielded by shelves of knick-knacks and some vertical ice chests.

When Harold finally gathered himself, he moved to approach the mirror, thinking only to verify that it was connected—but John held out an arm.

"Book first."

"Oh, o-of course." Harold set his bag on a nearby shelf and pulled out the Book, flipping to the first blank page.

Before he could work out which questions to ask, John growled, "Who's setting off explosions, anyway?"

 _Friend_ , came the quick reply. _Distracting The Order_.

Elias glanced over his shoulder. "Well, that's convenient."

"Explosions… is it Shaw?" John asked, a sharp edge to his tone. No one else he knew of was the type to be using bombs in the city, but Shaw… if she'd come back, if she'd escaped…

 _Not Shaw. Forgotten ally_.

Eyes shooting wide, Harold shut the Book. When John's eyes narrowed, his expression turning mutinous, Harold shook his head. "Remember, the memory aversion effect can bleed out to other knowledge. We can't go hunting for information this way. Not until we've dealt with the main cause."

John looked away.

A moment later, he looked back, his face a carefully schooled blank. "All right. Get info on what we're walking into."

Opening the Book again, Harold found a blank page. "Any more information that can help us once we're in there?"

 _No additional anomalous threats_ , the words scrawled out. _Cultists won't be distracted long; haste advised_.

"All right, I'm going in. Five minutes—if I'm not back in five, get to safety."

Harold took a deep breath and nodded. "Of course."

John caught Elias's gaze. "I'm trusting you."

Elias gave a quick nod. "Don't worry, I've upped my game since I last confronted these guys. And we may not be able to use lethal force inside the Library itself, but if they come near Harold out here…" He grinned, briefly showing his gun.

"Glad to hear it," John said low, his neon-bright Hypersensate flash gun already in his hand. As he dialed it up, Harold winced; it wasn't lethal, no, but the gloves had truly come off.

With a last nod at Elias, John crouched low, laid his hand on the mirror, and vanished in a sudden ripple of movement.

* * *

As Elias took up position from the place he could best see the entrances to their little alcove, Harold positioned himself to see as much as he could through the reflection, without being too close to the mirror itself. Unfortunately, there were clocks on the wall near the mirror, and dozens of can openers and tiny nutcrackers on the nearby shelves, well within his peripheral vision. As much as he braced himself and tried to maintain _some_ level of usefulness, the sensations were too much; his eyes, already watery, began to overflow, tears streaming as though they could protect him from a light no one else could see.

Elias glanced his way. "I've got this," he said. "Duck back and close your eyes."

Too relieved at the notion to fight it, Harold leaned against a thick rug hanging on the wall, and tried not to visualize what might be happening to John while they were apart.

It was only when Elias said, "Talk to me, Harold," that Harold realized that he was trembling.

"I'm sorry," he breathed. "It's just…" He shook his head.

"I'm not going to let them get you," Elias said with quiet confidence.

Harold slumped down a little. "As grateful as I am for your help," he murmured, "you can't fight them all. Even John… can't…"

"Can't take out an entire cult? I'm inclined to agree. But we're not here to take out The Order; we're just here to get some information, remember? You're the one who suggested this plan."

"It's the only thing I can see to do," Harold said miserably. "I don't even know if it'll help. It's the same thing I've been doing all my life: Trying to stay three steps ahead of capture or death." He sucked in a shuddering breath. "Maybe it's finally caught up with me."

"A little early to be throwing in the towel, don't you think?"

Rubbing his arms, suddenly cold, Harold wondered if this was the last conversation the two of them were ever going to have. If the day would end with one or the other in the clutches of The Order. Was that what the Book had meant when it said that Elias would increase their chances of success? Sacrifice his friend because they really didn't have a feasible alternative?

"I used to be running from the Foundation," he said. "I was terrified of them, and they didn't even know about me. Now I've got The Order after me as well, and, thanks to my own foolishness, both of them know _exactly_ what they stand to gain when they catch me. Or if, by some miracle, I manage to evade them entirely… we're living in a world where small random things can destroy you. Put on a hat, eat a piece of fruit, drive down the wrong street one day…" He shook his head. "Most people don't even realize until it's too late."

"Which is why your team exists." Elias's voice was warm with affection, even a little pride. "Stepping in to protect the innocent, so they can go on being innocent a while longer."

"But it's pointless," Harold protested. "All our resistance… it's hopeless. We scurry around, try to survive. Help some people, while we can. Hope that our deaths mean something… leave a legacy behind… but humanity is at the mercy of forces we can't even _perceive_ , much less defend ourselves against. Does it even matter that a few people live a few more years?"

"Morbid thinking, Harold."

Harold's chin trembled; he wanted to sink down, to bury his head in his hands. To hide under the covers until the world was as simple and predictable as he'd imagined it, back in childhood. "Sometimes I wish that I'd never known any of this. That I could live my life oblivious to the true nature of the world."

"A nice thought," Elias agreed. "Like going through life never knowing about poverty, or war. Or the many other horrible things that happen to people."

As Harold tried to take deep breaths, to calm his system down, he felt Elias approach him. "Then again," Elias said softly, laying his hand on Harold's shoulder, "that's the selfish path… as I believe our friend Nathan can attest to."

And then Nathan was stepping onto Harold's shoulder, snuggling in against his neck, as Harold recalled with shame the moment when he'd finally given in and opened the Book, asked it to show him his friend—and been hit with the reality of what had happened to Nathan, and where Nathan had been taken.

All because Harold had been so determined to stay out of it, and Nathan… Nathan was, in every way, the better man, and couldn't bring himself to ignore people who needed help that no one else could give.

Shivering, Harold recalled, too, how Nathan's plight had spurred him on to an act of sheer desperation: Sneaking his way into the Foundation lab in Jersey, ghosting after agents through the gates and down giant elevators into what once had been a mine, now converted into miles of underground facilities full of horrors that Harold had spent his life trying not to contemplate. Just a small exposure as a teen had scarred him for life, and yet here he was, steeling himself against the sights and sounds of suffering, pushing back the overflow of his own 'gift,' hacking into their system to locate Nathan, and smuggling him out: a scared and disoriented chalk drawing, carefully folded and kept next to Harold's hammering heart as he cautiously worked his way back out of the facility.

He'd very nearly fainted when one of the researchers had looked straight at him and smiled eerily, clearly unaffected by the aversion field his cufflinks provided. The researcher had studied him for a moment, opened her mouth as if to call out, and then tilted her head, closed her mouth, and moved on. Harold had swallowed a mouthful of bile and held himself together long enough to make it to the car before breaking down into terrified tears; it had been a while before he'd been able to pull himself together enough to drive home.

(It was only later on, under a dose of mnestics, that he'd recalled what he hadn't noticed the first time: The researcher had been floating along without any feet. Just blank space, starting at about the mid-calf. She'd been an anomalous entity quietly walking through the halls, ignored.)

"I'm sorry, Nathan," Harold choked out, reaching up blindly to hold his friend a little closer. "I haven't forgotten. I'm just… scared. Like always." He nodded, firmly but cautiously, so as not to dislodge Nathan from his neck. "You've always been the brave one."

"Do you mean to tell me that you're _not?_ " Elias asked, from back at his station across the room. "I remember when you came to me for help, that time that John caught the ire of that pack of faceless ghost urchins. Showing up outside my lair like that took guts, and letting Anthony escort you in where you couldn't expect a pleasant welcome… well, I couldn't help but admire your courage. Especially when I noticed that you were doing your very best to pretend that you weren't trembling."

Harold let out a despairing laugh. "I've occasionally done very brave and very foolish things," he said, "but the fact remains that, for the majority of my life, I have made decisions based more on my own fear than on rational thought… let alone compassion. And on more than a few occasions, those decisions have had devastating consequences for the few people I hold most dear. I've kept my circle of friends quite small, Elias, not simply because of the vulnerability, but because I know far too well that… that I cannot be trusted with friends."

"Given how readily you've sacrificed yourself for John, you'll forgive me if I find that claim a little suspect."

"You haven't seen me at my worst," Harold said. "Ask Nathan—his son is off on a pilgrimage through Sudan trying to hunt down a way to unseal his powers. Powers that could save innocent lives… but I was too scared to let him keep them, so I took them away. Ostensibly to keep him safe.

"Or the one time I actually fell in love. We had all of four months before I came to my senses and realized the kind of danger that I was putting her in, simply through association with _me_. I protected her by putting her in a cage, and the only difference between me and the Foundation is that the prisoners of the Foundation are _aware_ of the cage.

"And the worst part is, I chose that cage for her, without even consulting her, without considering any other options at all. The one thing I could think of that would keep her completely safe, or as safe is it is possible to be in this world… and when The Order found her anyway, despite all my precautions, I had John move her to another type of cage. I've stolen her life, twice now, and I'm too much of a coward to even correct the error."

"So she's trapped in some anomalous item somewhere?"

Harold sighed. "She's living in Milan, except… she's off sync with the rest of the world, practically invisible to normal humans. Forgotten as soon as anyone's attention focuses on something else. She's unable to be targeted by enemies… and equally unable to make any friends.

"So, you see, I can't even be trusted with friendship. Because of my fear."

"Sometimes lying low is the rational strategy," Elias allowed, "but it does sound like you've gone far beyond that. If we happen to get out of our current predicament… you might want to revisit that decision. As you've said, we may all be rats scurrying around trying to avoid death for a little longer… but there's a difference between living and merely surviving. And she might be just as willing to join the fight as Nathan here, or John."

Harold's stomach turned over at the reminder that this might well be their last conversation; by morning, Elias could be wearing a control collar. And as much as he wanted to ask Elias to leave, to save himself, he already knew the man's answer; they were going to see this through to whatever end might come.

* * *

The mirror's surface rippled again, and John was stepping out, motioning to them to come inside. Harold breathed a sigh of relief.

As the mirror admitted him back into the old, familiar place of what used to be safety, Harold felt the tingle of its pleasure at seeing him again. The place couldn't exactly be called an entity, but it did have something approaching awareness, and Harold's love of both research and stories had endeared him to the Library like no one else. Not only had the Library found ways to make life easier on Harold at every turn—twisting its own dimensions to provide him easier access to wherever and whatever he was after at the time—but it had also gone out of its way to teach Harold its secrets.

Right now, both traits would be useful.

On the floor as Harold entered were three cultists. Not unconscious, but clearly disoriented and in the throes of sensory overload, no doubt wishing that they had the mercy of being blind and deaf. John's Hypersensate wasn't lethal, but it wasn't exactly merciful, either. The effects only lasted twenty minutes or so, but they effectively kept the victims out of the fight… not to mention silent, because when the sound of your own pulse was an agony, you didn't dare cry out or even breathe too loud.

"Where we going, Finch?" John growled low, not out of compassion for the cultists but the awareness that other enemies might be nearby.

Harold glanced around. Shouldn't there be dozens of cultists here? They kept the Foundation out more through numerical advantage than through any real show of force. Were they really all caught up with those explosions?

He opened the Book to a blank page. "Why aren't there any guards? Or, well, so few guards?"

 _Operations threatened_ , the Book declared. _More important than guarding Library_.

John growled. "I don't care how many threats we aren't seeing; we're not gonna spend any more time in here than we have to. Let's _go!_ "

Nodding, Harold turned around, getting his bearings. The Library was different every time you entered, but there were certain features that could be relied upon. With practiced ease, he headed off between the endless shelves, turning at seemingly random spots as Nathan clung to the side of his neck and the other two followed close on his heels. Around them, the shelves shifted, closing off paths behind them and obscuring view of more than a few feet in any direction.

"I thought you said that this place made navigation easy for you," John groused.

"The chamber of the Allseer is deliberately obscured," Harold said calmly. "Having anyone be able to reach it from the entrances would be… not a good thing, John, believe me. It took me months to run across it the first time, and I hope we're lucky enough that The Order hasn't located it these past two years."

As he walked, the carpeted floor silent beneath his feet, Harold felt a wave of helpless nostalgia. For more than twenty years, this had been the place where he'd spent nearly every waking hour; it was the place he'd felt the safest, the least vulnerable to discovery or capture. Yet now, it was a threat… and even if they dealt with the threat of The Order, it would be impossible for this place to ever be home again.

He'd been chased out of his home in Lassiter… and he'd been chased out of this place, too. How many other places would he be chased out of before he finally couldn't run anymore?

Sighing, he paused to run a hand over a shelf, fondly… and there, between copies of _The Invisible Man_ (Ellison, without the definite article, and Wells, with it), was a shining light, silvery lavender, declaring the object's use as a strong antimemetic.

His cufflinks.

His breath caught as he picked them up, and raised his eyes to the boundless rows of books above them. "You've been saving them for me, haven't you?" Quickly, he pulled off his existing cufflinks, placed them on the shelf, and replaced one side with the anomalous ones; then, recalling that John and Elias were on Tier Four mnestics, put on the other half as well. The cultists would ignore him, but the effect, useful as it was, was only a Tier Three. "Thank you," he said with a slight bow, and turned to continue their journey through the rows of shelves.

If there were other cultists within the maze of bookshelves, they didn't run into them, or even hear them nearby; Harold was tense enough that he couldn't even call it a blessing. Nathan held tight to his collar, a slight but comforting weight.

Then, without warning, the shelves parted before them, and the Allseer loomed high above, seemingly so much higher than the Library itself could go, even though the Library was already like dozens of libraries stacked on top of each other. But this chamber… it surpassed the rest of the place, like Mount Everest surpassing foothills.

The structure itself wound down to a central beam, down to a thin silvery-purple crystal, suspended in mid-air and glittering, as if tiny sparks of energy were escaping it—or being consumed by it.

Just glancing at the crystal let Harold know exactly how to operate the Allseer, as it had the first time. Its task, the controls, the warnings: All was as clear to him as his knowledge of birdsong, bright and obvious and natural. Without that, his first encounter with it might well have been his last.

His memories of those few seconds were dim, but he recalled it being bad enough to wrench himself away almost instantly, and lie there on the floor sobbing for long minutes thereafter. He'd never intended to use the crystal ever again.

Of course, his first encounter hadn't had a purpose beyond mere curiosity. This time, they had a purpose—and no time to delay.

Harold set Nathan on the floor, and cautiously faced the Allseer. "When I'm done with this," he said, "I'm going to be effectively blind. I may be incoherent for a while." He pulled a stretchy plastic bracelet out of his pocket and turned back to hand it to Elias, along with his bookbag. "In case you need to move me before I'm quite together again… put it on my wrist, and I'll be one eighth of my normal mass."

Elias pulled the bookbag strap over his neck and positioned the bag at his side, then looked the bracelet over. "I'm pretty sure I could lift you."

"If you need to move me before I can walk out, we'll most likely be in some sort of firefight. I'll be far less of an encumbrance if I'm lighter. Besides," he added with an awkward frown, "if you have to swing me over your shoulder, it should be less traumatic to my injuries. Just be careful with my neck." He sucked in a breath. "Also, if I touch this thing for more than two minutes, the effect on my sanity may be irreversible. So at the minute and a half mark, if I haven't let go, get me off of it. Don't touch it yourself."

"Got it," John said.

"I never had anyone watching me the first time, so I don't know what it looks like from the outside. I may go through contortions or cry out. Whatever happens, don't pull me free early; I can get loose if I need to, but we need the info enough to risk the side effects."

John's murmured assent was far from happy, but at least it was assent.

"Besides the recording, try to write down anything I say. It might not come out in recordable form."

"I've got paper and a phone at the ready," Elias said.

Harold nodded. "Thank you." He took a deep breath. "Got that timer ready?"

"Whenever you say," Elias replied.

"Begin," he said, reaching forward to touch the crystal.

* * *

The chill was instant and straight through the bone to the aethereal essence of his being—not as if heat had been taken away, or as if heat had never existed, but as though he were somehow existing on a plane where heat was fundamentally not a concept related to any part of his being. The heat of fear and pain and horror were gone too, leaving clinical detachment; that was necessary, because the info rushing through his awareness was impossible enough to handle on its own, let alone if he could react to it with any significant emotion.

Everything around him, every detail, even molecule, atom, quantum particle; he knew them and their states. The entire Library lay bare before his gaze: the people behind him, the rag doll at his feet holding the recording device, the cultists streaming in through the mirrors, burrowing through the shelves, trying to locate the intruders.

And he also saw, and fully understood, the entity that had come into their midst… its nature, its purpose, its desires, pure and uncomplicated. How he had unwittingly triggered it, simply by delving into the wrong book. And, from the assets at his disposal, the most obvious way to counter the effect—along with how unlikely it would be to get in there safely, and which assets would best improve their chances.

The solution would hurt John, more deeply than Harold had ever hurt John before, but the knowledge was just that: knowledge. No emotions connected to the idea, just the awareness of their existence, the connection between elements.

 _Lassiter_ , he called out. _Antim hazard, knowledge is danger_. But they needed enough knowledge to solve the problem, and he was going to forget all this the moment he let go. How to phrase it in a way that revealed the solution without letting John know? _I'm the key_ , he said.

Then, also: _Haste. Fifteen cultists just entered the building_.

* * *

Harold's gasp upon touching the crystal conveyed something deeper than pain, and he stiffened up, eyes rolling back in his head. Mere seconds went by before he was crying out words, most of which didn't matter to John as soon as Harold said _fifteen cultists_.

Before John could even step in, Harold was stumbling back, free of the crystal, crying out in wordless distress. Elias got to him faster than John did, as Harold collapsed into his arms, eyes staring sightless.

Not hesitating, Elias slipped the bracelet over Harold's wrist; besides Harold's warning, they could already hear the rustle of fabric far off through the maze of bookshelves.

"Let's go," he said, hoisting Harold over his shoulder, gun still at the ready. John swept Nathan up and tucked him inside his shirt, and they were on the move.

The shelves parted around them like waves, closing in behind, blocking access to their pursuers; the Library had chosen its side. But their luck couldn't hold forever. When John turned a corner and spotted a pair of cultists ahead of him, he took them out with the Hypersensate before they could make a sound—but they were only the first.

The next few minutes were a blur, with John taking out anyone he saw while Elias, toothless, focused on getting Harold to safety. Which meant the mirrors, if they could find one; the lack of easy access cut both ways.

One of the cultists got his gun out before John had taken out his allies, but the floor beneath them roiled, and the bullet went wide; some big doorstopper of a book suddenly fell from a shelf and hit him on the head. The man probably wasn't dead, but Elias certainly didn't envy him the headache he'd have when he woke up.

At length, they got in sight of the mirrors, glimpsed in snatches between the moving scenery. But the Library seemed a little picky about which one to let them use; the maze directed them away from the first few sets until John's frustration got the better of him and he swept a line of books onto the floor.

"Harold's practically your _pet!_ " he growled. "We're trying to save him—help us get him out of here!" But the shelves continued to direct them away.

"It's probably trying to find ways that aren't blocked with cultists," Elias gasped out. "Would sure be nice if I could use my gun."

Just then, another shot rang out, and again the floor undulated beneath them; the shot grazed John's shoulder, and immediately the shooter was catapulted into the air, stories high all at once, shrieking. They didn't stick around to see if he survived the fall.

A minute later, with Elias and John both out of breath, they stopped to get their bearings, on alert for any other cultists in the area.

"Let me up," Harold said, struggling a little; Elias carefully helped him to his feet, and Harold stowed the bracelet in his pocket again.

"Pretty fast recovery," Elias observed.

"I still can't see right," Harold countered. "It's all just blobs of color… I can't—"

"Here," John said, and placed Nathan on Harold's shoulder again. "He can at least tell you which direction to run.

"But why isn't it—"

More shouts rang out as yet more cultists spotted them, and whatever Harold had meant to say got lost in the exchange. Someone had gotten the message around; the cultists had put away their guns, and instead came close enough to throw punches. Which wasn't an improvement: John's skill with hand-to-hand combat was hardly equaled by the random citizens who'd joined The Order, and Elias held his own just as handily, positioned on the opposite side of Harold as they got hemmed in. But at least the Library didn't object to the attacks… at least, noticeably.

When finally the way lay open on one side, John barked " _Go!_ "—but Elias was already escorting Harold down through the shelves as John held the rear. He wanted to stay with John—wanted to ensure that they didn't leave John behind, to be captured or killed, maybe even turned over to the Foundation in exchange for something more valuable to The Order—but he knew that he couldn't help John by staying in danger.

The movement of Nathan's hands kept Harold moving, as fast as he could go without falling, but the world around him was still more like a kaleidoscope than anything recognizable. "We need—to find—the mirrors," he gasped out, hoping that the Library would pay attention.

"Those cufflinks gonna keep them from noticing you?" Elias asked.

"Unless some of them are on Tier Three mnestics."

"Good. Then come on, and let's hope John follows. He's got the edge back there, so long as he doesn't have to worry about us."

Before they'd made it far, they spotted the mirrors up ahead—the way blocked by a small group with menacing expressions. "Take him alive!" one of them shouted, the order coming a little late, as several shots rang out. To Harold's horror, Elias suddenly jerked back, gasping, and a bright red stain began to spread out along the lower part of his shirt.

"Hope you're right about those cufflinks," Elias murmured low. "Get out of here when you can." He shoved Harold to the side of the aisle, and then turned and _ran_.

The cultists—what was left of them, after the shooters had been dealt with—followed hot on his heels.

More shots rang out.

Elias cried out again, in greater pain, but his footsteps barely faltered.

Then the bookshelves parted, and John was there, wiping blood off his face with the back of his hand. His eyes narrowed. "Where's Elias?"

Harold pointed. "He's hurt, John. We have to—"


End file.
